Opposing Forces: (Re)Playing Pocahontas and the Politics of Indian Removal on the Antebellum Stage

Opposing Forces: (Re)Playing Pocahontas and the Politics of Indian Removal on the Antebellum Stage Rebecca Jaroff In the spring of 1830, twelve-year-old Charlotte Barnes watched her mother, the popular actress Mary Greenhill Barnes, perform the title role in Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia at the Park Theatre in NewYork.TheplaybyGeorgeWashington Custishadpremiered in Philadelphia on 18 January,and proved a tremendous success, due to its patriotic tone, thrilling battle scenes, and, no doubt, a titillating dance performed by"native"women.Apparently Custis's play also left an indelible mark on young Charlotte Barnes, because the future playwright and actress reintroduced the Pocahontas tale to audiences in Philadelphia nearly twenty years later. The Forest Princess, or Two Centuries Ago debuted at theArch Street Theatre on 15 February 1848, and ran for two more nights. It was revived on 29 April and 3 May 1850, at the same theater, but the play never achieved the popularity its predecessor enjoyed . Nearly diametrically opposed to the earlier version, Barnes's play depicts Pocahontas as an adept politician who strives for racial and gender equality, rather than a loyal supporter of colonial domination who severs all ties with her own people. According to Gary Richardson, The Forest Princess is "an interesting exception" to the many Indian plays of the era, because it "minimizes the usual romance in favor of a carefully crafted retelling of the Pocahontas story noteworthy for its respectful treatment ofNativeAmericans."1 This essaywill expand on Richardson's observation in order to argue that The Forest Princess clearly subverts popularIndianplays offhedaybysupplyingPocahontaswith avoice,granting her political status, and allowing her to reject colonial domination. 483 484Comparative Drama Written and performed in the wake of the Indian Removal Policy and the SeminoleWars,Barnes'splayalso challenges fhebrutalnational agenda toward Indians that Custis's play seeks to reinforce. Examined together, fhe two plays reflect the dramatic conflict offstage as white Americans struggledto rationalizethe continued displacement ofIndians as anatural occurrence, rather than a practice tantamount to genocide. George Washington Custis, step-grandson of George Washington, wrote a number of nationalistic plays and is credited with starting the "vogue for Indian drama," with Indian Prophecy (1828); however, Pocahontas, or The Settlers of Virginia was his most successful of that genre.2Writtenjustasthe IndianRemovalPolicyof1830 wasbeingimplemented , the play champions innate white superiority through an already converted Pocahontas, who rejects her own people in favor of the colonists . Focused on Smith's battles with Powhatan and the inevitably romantic rescue of John Smith by a young girl, Pocahontas played for an unprecedented twelve nights upon opening in Philadelphia before it moved to the Park Theatre, where Charlotte Barnes no doubt watched her mother perform the lead.3 It was revived several times including, most notably, in 1836 at the National Theatre inWashington D.C.,just as a delegation from the Cherokee nation led by John Ross arrived in the nation's capítol to protest the tribe's removal from Georgia. Pointing out that the play"staged the ultimate assimilationist Indian,"Rosemarie Bank observes,"One can hardly imagine a worse simultaneitythan the Cherokee antiremoval cause . . . and a revival ofCustis's propacifistIndian drama. The coincidence of the two does not surprise, given the topicality of Indians in 1836, but the staging ofthis particular red-white cultural intersection tells several stories."4 Ofall the stories the play does tell, such as condoning the banishment of Indians, or championing white domination , Pocahontasstudiously ignores the story ofits title character. Little more than a mouthpiece for colonial usurpation, the Pocahontas played by Mary Greenhill Barnes bears little resemblance to the character her daughter would create and perform herself years later. In fact, Barnes's version seems a deliberate attempt to revise the earlier play, so that Pocahontas, her life, her accomplishments, even her death, receive respectful and comprehensive treatment. Meanwhile, the actress playing the title character actually performs the leading role. Culturally speak- Rebecca Jaroff485 ing, Barnes's figure more closely resembles the eighteenth century's version of a Pocahontas who first "emerges as an ambassador" and whose "acts of diplomacy should be read as attempts to establish a policy of reciprocity between the [the English and her tribe]. Her motives are explicitlypolitical rather than...